


Some Rise By Sin

by thatdamnuchiha



Series: In the Company of Elves [9]
Category: Naruto, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Betrayal, Death, Deja Vu, Dimension Travel, Gen, Haruno Sakura is So Done, If You Can Figure it Out Then Kudos to You, Not Canon Compliant, One Shot, POV Haruno Sakura, Pre-Relationship, Reincarnation, Sakura is an Angsty Bean, She's More of a BAMF Because of WHAT She is, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24876583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamnuchiha/pseuds/thatdamnuchiha
Summary: She feels it constantly - a sense of deja vu. She's been there before, only her arms were blank then, and her left wasn't marred by the oddly familiar, yet unreadable name of the person who's meant to complete her. The one whose soul calls to her own, no matter how twisted it is.Her soulmate.
Relationships: Glorfindel (Tolkien)/Haruno Sakura
Series: In the Company of Elves [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1430875
Comments: 18
Kudos: 282
Collections: Down The Rabbit Hole, Of Tales and Tears, The Many Iterations of Haruno Sakura





	Some Rise By Sin

Sakura wasn’t entirely sure when she realised it. That nagging feeling in the back of her head only grew the older she got. The one which gave her a sense of deja vu. It was always there, always present, and though it had taken her a while to find the correct word to describe it, deja vu summed up her situation perfectly.

Every time she looked down at her arms, they were blank for a moment, before the markings returned on her left arm. Black characters which rang a bell faintly in the back of her mind. Her soulmate mark. There was just one problem – no one could read it. One language existed in the Elemental Nations, and the gibberish written on her arm wasn’t it.

_Faulty,_ they called her. _The girl with the faulty soulmark._ Her hands curled into fists, hating how the bullies had changed from insulting her forehead to laughing at her exposed soulmark. The bullies weren’t the worst though. Sakura was angry. She was a teakettle of rage, and the pitying eyes which followed her around the village were the absolute worst. _A faulty soul,_ they called her.

_She wouldn’t be good for anything._

Sakura was determined to prove them wrong. She was a child born of fire and steel, with ice in her eyes and blood on her tongue as she choked on the toxic opinions of those around her. She was spiteful, and she _hated_ the world. She hated it so much. She hated it enough to make herself want to _burn_ it to the ground. She tilted her head occasionally whenever that thought came to her, staring down at her hands as though they might have an answer as to why that thought felt so _right._ It felt like it fit her perfectly, like a glove. She didn’t understand why. It was just one of those things which always seemed to happen to her. Only to her.

But making the world burn was harder than it sounded. Sakura was a smart girl though, and her mother often told her so. She knew exactly what she needed to do to become capable of burning the world to ashes. _To make them stop calling her faulty._ Her nails dug into her palms at the thought, beads of blood welling up in the white crescents her fingernails had left. _She wasn’t faulty, and she definitely had a soulmate._ They just weren’t… there.

Oh, Sakura wished they were. She couldn’t recall the amount of times she had dreamt of them turning up riding a white horse, ready to sweep her off her feet and carry her away into the sunset. _Wasn’t that every young girl’s dream?_ She always laughed at those old thoughts nowadays. She was seven years old. Thoughts like that had long since passed – because part of her knew that she wouldn’t be encountering her soulmate. The same part of her which screamed of deja vu. The same part of her which yelled out obscenities inside her mind.

_Inner,_ Sakura called her, because they were meant to share a name. They were meant to be the same person, but Inner was everything she couldn’t show the world. Not unless she wanted to die a gruesome death at the hands of her own village. _Who in their right mind would want to burn the world to the ground?_ Inner laughed at that. _They weren’t in their right mind._ How could they be? What with everyone staring at her in the street whenever she walked by, eyes sometimes pitying, others staring at her with a different message behind their veiled gazes.

To some she was an abomination.

Sensors claimed her chakra was vile. She had heard them talk about her once, saying that her chakra was twisted and wrong. It was why so many eyes followed her through the village. Because her soulmark was wrong. Because there was only one other person who’d ever had an incorrect soulmark – his had been missing – and his chakra had been warped to show it.

They compared her chakra to Uchiha Madara’s, whispering about the similarities between her and Konoha’s first missing nin. _It just made her want to burn them down that much quicker._ They didn’t get to judge her like that. They didn’t get to decide what path she would walk down. They didn’t get to assume she would turn out exactly like the last person with _wrong_ chakra.

_She was going to burn the world to the ground. She was going to be better than Uchiha Madara. She was going to do what he couldn’t._

She was Haruno Sakura, and she hated the world with a passion. She hated everything about the place she was born to. The parents who pitied her and cried in shame whenever they thought she couldn’t hear. _Because the village was toxic._ It didn’t accept those who were different.

Only there was a constant niggling suspicion in the back of her head, akin to the deja vu that stalked her through her life. One which whispered to her that Haruno Sakura wasn’t her true name. Not anymore.

She dreamt then – and she dreamt of fire and sorcery. Of souls being knitted together. Of souls changing. Of them being warped into something they weren’t. Of another name being hammered into them. Something deep inside of her burnt, like the embers of a fire being stoked to life. It felt so similar to the sorcery of her dreams, mangled and twisted and knitted to her very soul itself, and it burned through her like a raging inferno which wanted to _consume_.

And consume she would.

* * *

Spring came into her life from the perpetual winter of her soul when she met one Uzumaki Naruto. Something in her rose to life at the sight of those whiskered cheeks splitting into a grin, and Sakura _remembered_. She remembered him asking her out though he had never come close to her before. She remembered him smiling at her, just for her. She remembered him by her side.

None of that had happened. Not as far as she could recall. _So why were there memories of that?_ Why did it weave into the feeling of deja vu so well? _Why wasn’t he doing that then?_ But Sakura already knew the answer to the last question at least – because he had a soulmate.

_Hyuuga Hinata._

And Sakura _hated_ her. Naruto was supposed to be hers. He was meant to be there for her in some shape or form. She wanted the cheerful blonde she saw in her dreams. In those weird moments which accompanied the ever present feeling of deja vu. She wanted that support. A shoulder to lean on. _She wanted a soulmate, but they weren’t there._

But Naruto never looked at her. He had his soulmate. He had Hinata. So Sakura was forced to stay away. Forced to acknowledge that the Naruto she saw at her side in those weird moments wasn’t the same one before. _And he never would be._ Because that Naruto didn’t exist. _Because that was the Naruto from when their arms were bare, unmarred by the bold black names of their soulmates._

Sakura turned away from the phantoms of that beaming smile, and she blinked as she found another who kindled those same feelings. Who made her want to smile. Who made her want to _not_ burn the world to a crisp. _But the black name marring his arm made her lips curl in disgust._

_Uzumaki Karin._

She hated that girl too, even though they had never met. Because she had taken something that could have been Sakura’s. _What should have been hers._ Her nails dug into her arm then, scratching at the _painfully familiar_ script. _Why couldn’t she read it?_ She felt as though she ought to have been able to do just that.

Sakura wanted to know them. She wanted to find them. To parade them around in front of everyone and say, _‘I’m not faulty’._ But that wasn’t to be.

Instead, when she graduated from the academy, she wasn’t on the jonin track. She wasn’t a part of any team. Rather, she found herself shunted into the genin corps. _Never to advance. Never to rise up the ranks. Never to become anything more than fodder._

She knew why too. She heard the whispers. _Because she had a faulty soulmark. Because she seemed too similar to a past traitor._ They didn’t want another.

And Sakura could only grit her teeth together and bear it. _Because there was nothing she could do._ She wasn’t strong enough. _And everyone only saw her as a ghost of the past._

They never saw who she really was.

Then again, even Sakura didn’t know who she really was.

_After all, nobody had ever seen who she was beneath the unreadable soulmark._ It defined her. Every aspect of who she was. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to hate it, because the name was that of the person who would love her. _Who could complete her, even as twisted as she was._

She wanted them.

She wanted them so badly it hurt.

But they weren’t there.

* * *

When she finally came face to face with the two boys she had loved so dearly, it wasn’t as friends, nor even as comrades. Instead, she had a slash through her forehead protector. A slash through the symbol of the village which had turned its back on her. Whose people hadn’t helped her when she was injured and lying in a ditch. Whose people she had left in order to survive and find herself before she came around to burn them to pieces.

Her chakra nature was fire.

She probably ought to have seen that coming.

Just like she should have seen the confrontation coming – but she didn’t. She didn’t see them coming, until a crackling, chirping hand ploughed its way through her chest with a sickening squelch.

Sakura recognised those red spinning eyes. She remembered the hand through her chest. _After all, it wasn’t the first time it had pierced through her heart._ Only this time, Naruto wasn’t screaming for Sasuke to stop. Blue eyes only watched in approval. Hyuuga Hinata claimed the mission had been too easy. Red eyes faded to black, bloodied hand removing itself from the cavity it had made in her chest.

They weren’t her friends. They never had been.

Betrayal ripped through her, tears leaking down her face as she stumbled back. _Sasuke had ripped her heart out. Again._ They weren’t hers anymore. They never had been.

The fire in her soul crackled to life, Inner embracing her inside the comfort of her mind as something in her snapped like a taut thread. Her skin rolled, a wordless snarl escaping her as she roared her rage. _She was dying. Again._

The hole in her heart wouldn’t heal.

Sakura blinked, staring at the world which looked so much smaller all of a sudden, even as blood continued to leak from the grievous wound Sasuke had delivered to her. _Again._ A screech escaped her lips. _They felt funny._ She ran her tongue over her teeth, face shifting as she felt the sharp points to each and every one of them. _Why was everything so much smaller?_ She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. _What did it matter?_

Her eyes stung with tears, fire bubbling up inside her chest, and Sakura let it out.

Fire rained down from her mouth, swelling through the forest surrounding her, and Sakura laughed silently as the world was finally set aflame. She was free in that instant. Free to burn the world which had hated her so. Free to burn the ant-sized humans who had turned their back on her.

And burn she did.

She burnt the world around her until her anger had subsided and her vision grew blurry. No matter how her body had changed from something human and soft to something with sharp teeth and claws, it didn’t change the fact she’d received a fatal wound. Her anger drained along with her blood, and though Sakura couldn’t cry in that strange, _familiar,_ form she was in – which towered over mountains – she was still crying inside.

Because she had never belonged. Because she felt empty. Because she was tired of being unloved. It hurt. The wounds on her very soul itself festered, and within her dying grief, Sakura found another feeling.

_Regret._

For everything that she’d become. For allowing herself to be betrayed. For setting so much on fire in the strange memories she had which weren’t of there. She wanted peace and quiet. She wanted her happiness. _Though really, Sakura knew she didn’t deserve it._

* * *

She came to with a gasp, in a place unfamiliar to her. The land around her wasn’t the burnt out husk she had left behind. Instead, it was somewhere completely new and different. Though there was one thing she remembered – and it was the stars above them. They weren’t those of the Elemental Nations, of course, but that didn’t mean she didn’t recognise them. No. She had flown under those stars before.

It was yet another world she had set on fire in her anger. _After Sasuke had stabbed her through the heart the first time._ When the betrayal was new news to her. Now, though, it was old news, and Sakura was tired.

So very tired and _so_ empty.

Her soul still burnt, but Inner was silent for once, and Sakura felt a weird harmony in her soul as her rage faded away – replaced by sorrow, self-loathing, and regret for all that she had done. For all which could have been if she hadn’t been a pint-sized being of rage and fury. _Inner was gone, merged with her, for she had finally accepted that part of her._ The ugliest part of her which had hated the world. Inner wasn’t just something which had been stitched onto her soul the first time she had set foot in those lands, angry and hurt with betrayal. _And those emotions of her had been used._

She was a fool.

Sakura glanced down at her bandaged arm, fingers curling around the limb with that script on it. She knew then, deep in her soul, that her soulmate was of that world. Of the world she had been dragged to before she could reach the pure lands. Of the world she had once terrorised.

And she knew then, what name would be written on her soulmate.

Not Haruno Sakura.

That world didn’t know that name, just as the Elemental Nations hadn’t known the name of her soulmate. Still, the name of Haruno Sakura was a traitor. The name she bore in that world was so much worse. She was an unnatural being, woven of a tortured soul and fire and sorcery. A being of destruction, who had fought on the side of evil in her blind rage, and her old need to make the world hurt. _Just because of a stupid boy who had betrayed her._

Carefully, she unwrapped the bandages concealing her arm, and her _shameful_ soulmark, from view. It was still shameful to her. _Because of what she had done to that world._ She didn’t deserve them. _No matter how much a small part of her wanted a second chance._ She wasn’t worthy of it.

Tears blurred her vision, and Sakura stared down at the name written in a beautiful script she recognised. She had been taught it in her first stay in that world. Though not by the beings who had made it. She had been taught it so she could torment those beings.

She didn’t know the exact person who bore her own soulmark though. There were countless elves, and she had never bothered to remember any of their names. They had just been ants to her. _Until one had managed to kill her._

But Sakura knew she had deserved her death then and there. It was funny how hindsight worked, and no matter how much she wanted to go back and change things – to not do those terrible deeds she had done across her last two lives – she couldn’t.

She ran her finger over the name.

_Glorfindel._

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is the oneshot which is a prelude to another work I want to do/finish/post up eventually. Sakura/Glorfindel is endgame, but the next work (when/if I get around to it) will be a long one (hence why I'll be waiting a bit). This oneshot is, I guess, to test the waters. Though I'll warn you now.
> 
> Here there be angst. Lots and lots of angst.


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